


Nowhere in the Corridors, or Things That Go Bump in the Night

by Iambic



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Radek can't see like the others can. But he can hear things they can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere in the Corridors, or Things That Go Bump in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the artword LiveJournal community, and is accompanied by ["The Fiddle and the Drum"](http://kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com/156877.html), a vid by kikimiserychick.

Atlantis is never silent. You can hear the static on the radio and the humming of machinery and it's getting to you more than you can know . And it's rhythmic, compelling, and you can't escape it. Atlantis hums within your skull and underneath your skin, and you are not so sure you want her gone, now she has gotten in.

But now, now that you cannot trust your eyes but grope along by what your fingers can touch, the sound of the city rings like a gunshot through you ears, and the rhythms all run against each other. The discord might make you scream, if you were a screaming sort of man. The humming crashes along your veins, growling, wailing its song more like a banshee than a siren, and you wonder if this is how it will always feel, inside a city that does not accept you into her inner workings. You fear you may always be colourblind to Atlantis, lacking the genetic eyeglasses to help you see.

\--

John hears your rhythms in steady drumbeats, a palpitation so familiar he does not seem to notice it. But you can hear it pounding through his veins in signals, a Morse code you fear to decipher. Everything he touches, all he activates, pounds with that same steady beat, and you hear it where you cannot see, hear it in the colours of muted green and pale grey, cement and mold and the remnants of the war. During the day and often into the night he prepares for war, you all prepare for war, but sometimes he disappears. John sees the potential, possibly, but you see the city not as young and unfulfilled, but old, revived from stasis just before her final dying throes.

They come in steady beats: the rhythm of John Sheppard tapping his fingers against the conference table.

\--

Atlantis is failing. You can hear her screaming in her sleep, when her orchestra whips into a frenzy and you hold your pillow tight over your ears to drown out the cacophony. The city cannot assimilate you, so she bares herself instead, and you can hear where she cries out against frayed wires and disturbed signal and the blast in her side that you and Rodney promised to look into tomorrow. You almost crawl out of bed and down the hallway, anything to dim the noise, but simple practicality holds you back. You know you cannot fix such a malfunction on your own, in the dark, exhausted, and blind.

So you toss and you turn and you finally sing softly to yourself, out of tune but somehow in time to Atlantis, and she steadies herself in your ears until you finally fall asleep. In the morning your wall murmurs like an apology, but you do not want to consider that particular avenue, and so you simply pat it once and take a shower. The water sprays down in uneven spurts, and you hum along until you can find rhyme if no reason in their intermittence.

\--

John lifts his gun and shouts, wildly, for someone to tell him what the hell is going on, and you would like to ask him to please be quiet, but you have been restrained. You should not even be here, but on the last mission Rodney discovered a remarkably lemon-like fruit in his soup and is still back on Atlantis, recuperating in the static, in the white noise, in the unkempt beats.

He's not always this wild, though – or perhaps more accurately, he never used to be. Gradually, you think, he's been acclimating to life out of touch with humanity, with the need for civilisation as he knew it. Maybe this is how he always would have been, if not for societal boundaries that kept him in check. Whatever softened him then does nothing to soften him now.

He shoots every last assailant not quite dead and leaves them for the Wraith to find. Their ships scream overhead as you run for the gate, and you can almost hear the annoyance in it, the annoyance that probably comes of prey dying too soon, too easily. It's an undertone in the whine, a dissonant note that grates in your ears even as you pass through the event horizon and all sound cuts off. When you rematerialise in Atlantis, the echo of the Wrath darts lingers in your head until the unsynchronised drumming of a rhythmless city pushes it away.

Tonight, you will sleep with the certainty of the terminally ill, of a child: all will remain where you left it when you wake again.

\--

John saves everyone more times that should be natural, and he does it with an anger that you wish you did not understand so well. He hates the Wraith because he can, and resents everyone else for enabling him, and kills anyone who hurts his people because he has to fight for something. He fights for Atlantis like a drowning man fights to reach shore, to reach safety. He fights like he has no other way left to live.

John saves everyone once again, and goes down in the gate room shouting and insane until the battle leaves him. And then he laughs, the most unbalanced, off-beat sound you have ever heard, and collapses in the arms of his friends, his people.

No one seems to notice how you hang back and watch the struggle; no one seems to have any thoughts outside the immediacy of the problem at hand. And why should they? You do not resent the fact that the people of Atlantis have their priorities aligned. But today you will not be joining their number. You are listening to Atlantis hold her breath, to the thud-thud-thud of a heart that never powered a city so much as sustained a life – a hundred, two hundred lives. One life, fallen in the gate room.

Because it was John, you realise, John all along, with his erratic breathing and steady drumbeats and connection with Atlantis deeper than awareness could prove. John, who is splayed on the floor, with the air around him still echoing that last, off-kilter laugh.

In that moment, you know what you must do. Perhaps this is a selfish gesture, and perhaps someday John will thank you. If ever he realises what you are about to do. But the promise of your sleep and your sanity is enough to rationalise and justify what it is you do next.

You have no gene, and so the rhythms neither stop nor shift when you lower yourself into the control chair. The room darkens, and you now truly cannot see, but you find blindness familiar. You can still hear, in the dark. You can still hear Atlantis holding her breath, beats pattering to as much of a standstill as ever Atlantis comes to. And this moment of near silence becomes your opening.

You begin softly, a hum, and gradually tune it to a melody, a song you learned in your native tongue, long years ago. Eventually you begin to tap against the chair arms in time to your singing, and eventually your tap grows stronger, until it no longer sounds so much like a tap as a strike. As you continue, your rhythms grow louder, more complex, and then the humming around you abruptly chimes in, and the regular fizz of power flow, and the sound of your own heartbeat, loud in your ears. In the center of Atlantis, you announce yourself to a city that truly must possess sentience to so enjoy music. In the center of Atlantis, you eventually let your hands fall.

The city continues in her newfound rhythm, and for a moment you feel a stir beneath you, imagine that just for an instant the faintest of blue lights illuminates the back of your pant legs. But you cannot be certain.

Tonight you will sleep with the wonder of the refugee, of a child: Atlantis thumps away in a quiet rhythm, and the heartbeats of all her people gradually align. You will not see in the dark, but you know blindness by now.


End file.
